Dealing with heavy undercutters, how?

This thread is not about the morality of undercutting; there's 13 pages of that discussion here. This thread is discussing strategies to defeat heavy undercutters.

So now that that's out of the way. There's someone on my realm who regularly crashes the JC market for hybrid gems. Every Tuesday prices go up to well over 100g per gem. And every Tuesday this guy posts 10 of each gem for 40g. Yes, 40g, down from 100g, a 250% undercut.

Thus far I've just been buying them, and resposting with my stock. It helps move my immediate stock, but only fixes the problem until he logs on again, gets all happy that he sold out his stock, and once again crashes everything. I can move a lot in the time between buying his stuff and him posting more, but my current strategy is doing nothing but encouraging him to continue this. If I can't grab everything cheap before all the bots start undercutting his 40g, the market for that gem crashes hardcore for a few days. Of course, having to spend 40g a gem to bolster the market is cutting into my profit margin quite painfully.

So now that that's out of the way. There's someone on my realm who regularly crashes the JC market for hybrid gems. Every Tuesday prices go up to well over 100g per gem. And every Tuesday this guy posts 10 of each gem for 40g. Yes, 40g, down from 100g, a 250% undercut.

I don't believe you.

Some players have loads of gems from 4.1 shuffle. Prices will go up when they have sold their stock.

I don't see much of a problem, you are buying from him who sells cheap, then you relist for upwards of 2.5x what you paid, so you are making huge profits. If the market crashes for a few days, why aren't you buying all those gems that are under 40g? If anything you should love when the market crashes, because you get to pick up tons of gems for cheaper than you normally pay which is 40g. Once the market rebounds you'll make an even bigger profit, sure you sold no gems while the market crashed, but once it's back to 100g you need to sell fewer gems as you are making more profit on each gem.

When someone undercuts you by this big of a margin, you actually can profit huge on it. The problem is when you are posting at 100g, and he's posting at 99g, because this means yours wont sell, and you can't bug his out as you'll lose money. Then you have to post at 98, then he posts at 97, someone else jumps in at 96. Before you know it the market is crashing and you are lucky when you can even sell a gem at 70-80g.

Basically if people are going to undercut, you want them to undercut by a large amount, this way you can buy and resell. If they are undercutting by less than 10-20% you are in the worst position possible, as you'd have to drop your prices (profit) or wait till there's a huge buyer market and stay firm at 100g.

If there's that many auctions selling the item at a lower price, then what's happening isn't that he's crashing the market but rather that you're trying to maintain an inflated price. So, yes... expect to have to keep putting in some effort to maintain your cash cow.

Also, I don't see why you're complaining since every time he posts a 40g auction it's a 60g profit for you. Just treat him as your supplier and put your effort into making other stuff to sell.

Contact him directly, and ask him if he would like to COD gems to you at an agreed rate like 41g to cover his loss from mailing them to you. Then, you control how many gems you have listed without fear that this guy is at some stage going to randomly auction off some other gems, preventing possible sales from you.

The problem (i think) is not the price of this one guys gems, it's the people that don't know what they're doing. They list their gems at the new lower price with an addon (probably at default settings) which is done again by another person which drives the prices down further and further.

With regards to a strategy i normally don't cut my gems until i check the prices of all my cuts and then cut away.

sometimes I hugely undercut just tog et rid of the damn items hoping someone will buy it quickly and repost it at a higher price, if i need funds fast, as long as i'm turning a profit i'm okay, though massive undercuts are of course rare for me I do form time to time indulge.

I do it sometimes too. I just list my gem for 15-20g less. It highly depends on wich item / gem tho! a: i think the price is too high b: i want some quick gold, i do not wan't to check 5 mins later i'm already undercut by 5copper and have to re-do it again. If that cheap gem gets bought out by you quickly, there's no problem for the economy. Actually he got his gold, and you got free gold.

I do it sometimes too. I just list my gem for 15-20g less. It highly depends on wich item / gem tho! a: i think the price is too high b: i want some quick gold, i do not wan't to check 5 mins later i'm already undercut by 5copper and have to re-do it again. If that cheap gem gets bought out by you quickly, there's no problem for the economy. Actually he got his gold, and you got free gold.

/facepalm!

Ending it is all I fucking think about, that's the shit I think about
All alone, bawling 'til my mothafuckin' eyes bleed

i have a buddie who sells me all his ore/gems that his toons farm at a wholesale price, and i do the exact same thing its by far the eaisest way to make money, what you have to do is find out on your server when the most amount of guilds are raiding and determine what gems are going to be needed at that time and post gems at multiple prices of the same gem ranging in differnt prices sure, youre going to lose some money at the start but people are desperate at times and will always buy most of the time what they need regardless of the price

if the undercutter is ore shuffler - he got actually unlimited supply of gems, so there is no way in hell you can banish him from your market niches while buying his gems. logic is very simple: look, someone bought all my 10 gems - I'll go cut 15 more. as from my experience, most of those undercutters are people, who are trying to get some money from ore shuffle. so I would rather undercut them back at AH, make them gain no money for 2-3 days, get disappointed and leave my niche.